The Bradford Education Covenant Pdf 584 Kb
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Report of the Director of Children’s Services to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee to be held on 21st November 2018. N Subject: The Bradford Education Covenant Summary statement: This report provides a summary of the progress of the Education Covenant since the last report in December 2017 with a focus on the continued development of the core offer, youth voice, stakeholder’s involvement in determining the priorities for this academic year, school engagement and impact. Michael Jameson Portfolio: Strategic Director Education, Employment and Skills Report Contact: Jenny Cryer, Overview & Scrutiny Area: Performance, Commissioning and Children’s Services Partnerships, Children's Services Phone: (01274) 432438 E-mail: [email protected] 1. SUMMARY This report provides a summary of the progress of the Education Covenant since the last report in December 2017 with a focus on the continued development of the core offer, youth voice, stakeholder’s involvement in determining the priorities for this academic year, school engagement and impact. The Education Covenant is making clear progress supporting our children and young people at all phases of education with opportunities that will support them in raising the attainment levels and aspirations in children, young people and families. It has become a key conduit to promote the greater involvement of our community partners in the lives of young people, though providing brokerage with learning partners. 2. BACKGROUND At its heart the Education Covenant is a community promise that we will work together, with the collective goal to ensure that we ensure Children and Young People have successful lives and transition into adulthood. The successes of the Education Covenant have been achieved by building strong relationships with a range of community partners, developing joint ideas with them and enabling them to grow and develop then access and support Education by providing a brokerage service. The activity has grown across the range of partners including businesses, community organisations and individuals, resulting in a wide range of programmes which in themselves now have their own identity i.e. The Bradford Community Champions. Since the last report, the work of the Education Covenant has continued to solidify the relationships of current partners and provision, as well as broker new resources, programmes and initiatives for the benefit of our young people delivered through a wide range of settings including schools and community organisations. We have just launched the new education covenant prospectus for this academic year following the great success of the 17/18 version. The 18/19 prospectus offers schools 63 free activities from 52 different organisations, across all key stages, seeing an increase of 37 organisations offering their support and harnessing even more opportunities for children and young people. The prospectus forms a vehicle to leverage learning provision into schools and align such provision with the overall careers and technical education framework Bradford Pathways. The core programmes aligned to the Education Covenant continue to grow and develop: The Industrial Centres of Excellence is continuing to grow, this year we are planning that we will have over 15,000 young people supported through the partnership, up from 3000 in 17/18. The Inspiring Bradford Programme that took place in October 2017, acted as a catalyst to inspire primary schools to embed careers education into the curriculum now resulting in a £200k investment from the Opportunity Area funding to support between 70 - 80 primary schools in the most deprived wards, over the next two years with aspiration days, along with 2 networking events each academic year to be delivered to enable head teachers and senior leadership teams to build a network of supportive business leaders, professionals and Further and Higher Education contacts who will support the delivery of careers encounters integrated into curricula. Bradford Pathways – Dixons Research School are developing curriculum guidance document that will offer practical advice and ideas to support embedding essential skills into the curriculum at each age and stage of a pupils learning. In total 17/ 18 we had 4699 businesses that actively supported students at school, college and the university through work experience, site visits, industry visits, internships and other work based learning placements. Young people accessed 4693 community visits last academic year and 410 so far this academic year i.e. visits to the Science and Media Museum, St Ives Park and many other. 2.1 Public Relations (PR) The Education Covenant twitter account and Stay Connected e-newsletter, along with press releases are proving a great success in communicating good news stories coming out of the Education Covenant, helping to attract even more support from partners. The Twitter account has 931 Followers and Following 4182 with 769 tweets. Stay Connected has 4402 people subscribed. The Education PR Campaign plan has been put in place. 2.2 The Education Covenant Review On the 18th June 2018 we hosted the ‘Building the Covenant’ event which celebrated the great work the covenant has achieved so far and the ways that community partners are supporting our children and young people. 56 people from different organisations attended to consider next steps for the Covenant. There was representation from schools and colleges, businesses and the voluntary sector and key people from the public sector. The aim of the day was to move the covenant forward and to discuss how key stakeholders could get more involved strategically and what delivery would look like. The day was also really beneficial in shaping our next year’s focus and priorities. As one of the senior leaders expressed ‘the Education Covenant is ‘a promise that cannot be broken’. Following the discussions at the event the priorities for the Education Covenant for the next academic year (2018/19) will be: Engaging parents and carers in the Education Covenant and building an offer to support them and their children. Building a ‘cultural’ covenant that encourages families to engage and take part in the wonderful local cultural offers that we have in the district. Continue to grow the core Education Covenant offer and reissue the Covenant prospectus this September. The conversation at the event was captured pictorially: Positive feedback from the day included: The Education Covenant can make a difference! Definitely want more parental involvement/family learning and more work in Early Years. There was a general feel of positivity about the Education Covenant and the majority felt in order for a young person to achieve and be successful the fundamental basics have to be in place i.e.: good health care, diet, being a positive citizen and recognising that they are individuals. One primary school Head teacher felt the employer week she runs is brilliant and more schools should run these with the support from the volunteers sourced through the Education Covenant. One delegate having known nothing of the Covenant before she arrived felt it was very informative and was very positive about it. Delegates found the event a great opportunity to network and give strategic input into the Covenant and as such we will be holding an annual Education & Business Conference, this academic year it will be held in June 2019. 2.2 Bradford Community Champions (BCC) Last year saw the launch of the Bradford Community Champions and what a year it has been. Over the last Academic year 2017/18 the Bradford Community Champions: Have interacted with over 1500 young people Have attended assemblies at various schools such as Carlton Bolling, Queensbury and TRACKS (Trust, Respect, Achievement, Confidence, Knowledge, Success) The Bradford Community Champions were also involved in the ‘What’s my line’ activity when they did the Inspiring Bradford event through Primary Futures for a full week attending different schools. A full BCC report of the last academic year is now available and has direct feedback from schools including the Head teacher of one of our outstanding schools Carlton Bolling College who said ““Our school mission statement is ‘excellence for all’. We want to promote the highest of expectations among all of our students, so the Community Champions initiative is something we were keen to be involved in.” 2.3 Cultural Covenant (including youth voice) 2.3.1 The 25 x 25 The development of the cultural covenant has progressed and the 25 x 25 framework has gone out for consultation with children, young people and families. The 25 x 25 has the aspiration that all Bradford’s young people will have 25 cultural experiences by the age of 25. The consultations took place at: Bradford Festival which brings a vibrant, colourful and multicultural programme of the very best international, British and local theatre, art, music and dance right into the heart of Bradford – 837 members of the public were consulted ranging from birth to 92yrs old. The Dragon Boat Festival - 178 young people aged 11-18 were consulted 3 Primary Schools – speaking to children and parents. This consultation has been important to capture the voice of young people and to inform the development of the framework. The 25 x 25 is being developed by the Local Cultural Education Partnership in partnership with the Education Covenant. 2.3.2 Outstanding Culture for Children and Young People – Public Forum for Education. On September 27th the public forum for education shared the results of the youth voice survey along with showing evidence that children who participate or experience cultural education (arts, drama, dance, music) learn more effectively. Speakers from Feversham Primary Academy including musical entertainment by the children and Riddlesden St Mary’s Primary talked about how cultural experiences transformed their schools. Christian Bunting, Teaching School Director at St Edmunds Nursery School and Children’s Centre talked about the Early Years Cultural Offer. Evidence was presented by Feversham Primary Academy at the Forum showing the basis and impact of their approach, details are given in Appendix A.